In June 1999's "tale from universe" character Mike Weller meets his author Michael John Weller.
"Not seeing is disbelieving, Michael. Seeing is believing."
And so says one of Weller's arresting officers—psychologist character Doctor Alison Lines, created by MJ for his novel The Man Who Drew Too Much.
The novel, the third in a triology written by author "MJ" featuring his character Mike is set in a near futureauthoritarian-populistNew Communist Society where unemployment is against the law and scribbling sci-fi fanzines no occupation for a grown man. In sublime contradiction, New Communist reality is made up by MJ, a snooty right-wing author known for writing prize-winning literary novels. Mike Weller, a left-wing militant working-class character MJ Weller has created, claims he is the real author of his own destiny pleading "MJ" wouldn't exist at all if it wasn't for Mike himself. Mike writes "MJ" up, not the other way round.
An extract from MJ's novel is reproduced in Space Opera
. In contrast to Mike Weller writing his stories on a borrowed electronic typewriter, author MJ's paperback novel is written in sanserif font with a keyline indicating it has been borrowed to appear in Mike Weller's Space Opera
comic.
Character Mike Weller meets his author Michael John Weller though Space Opera
's pages and everything is altered. MJ's novel closes with his character Mike interrogated and assessed at a south London Kid Doctor Clinic (KDC)—part of an outsourced commercial health chain operated by the Marxist-Engelsian state and the Earth Corporation. Or so MJ's paranoid character believes after his author introduces himself to Weller in the novel. Characters Pin-Eyed Ferryman and Doctor Lines put Mike through intensive and exhaustive questions and examinations which are closely observed and noted by literary surgeon-general MJ.
MJ seems to know more about Mike Weller's imaginative life than Mike knows himself. "The omniscient author takes possession of his character" is the last frame of Mike Weller's Progress.
Using his available electronic typewriter, and using his own words, Mike Weller adopts the stance of writer describing his own experience of a crucifying "Near-life experience" alteration in the hands of MJ and his one-stop KDC creations. In response, a serif fonted-text is written in SO#10 by author Michael John Weller describing his own upbringing, education, and career as writer: and how the character Mike Weller emerged and developed through three successful novels. Towards the end of this extract there are signs MJ and Mike Weller are the same character and Space Opera
is in reality an illustrated autobiography and not a novel by an author named MJ.
Responding to MJ's intervention, Mike takes out the electronic typewriter again to describe his meeting with his own author. In the resulting dialogue it appears the only thing separating writer and written is not just social and political—there is a spiritual dimension.Twenty years on, this is more Earth Corporation "nu-wellerness" than a Marxist
old-skool religion "spirit of spiritless conditions" conversation.
Both writer and written are Altered by Space Opera beginning as a small press comic book pamphlet series may turn into an illustrated "tetraology" if or when Mike Weller is able to cast the correct spell his words and pictures take.
Mike Weller's tenth space opera tale twenty years on...is also published here
at linguistically innovative €#*@$?!
Covers for Space Opera's 1997-99 pamphlets are reproduced from old scans. They are nearer actual size than reduced images appearing on parallel blogspot posts. Because of their increased scale at HomeBaked, some covers have spots, lines and processual marks left in. The decision to sometimes include, or edit out evidence of jpeg reproduction is random. The publication of rusty old staples are left in here for March 1999's tale 'The Man Who Drew Too Much'.
'The Man Who Drew Too Much' is the pamphlet that went against Mike Weller's idea of upsetting an underground comics ethos with superhero characters 'fighting across generations in space and time'.What or whom was altering Mike Weller 's twenty-first century Cosmic Crusaders storybook plan for his own written and illustrated small press comic series?
Within Space Opera's The Man Who Drew Too Much is an imagined yet conventional twentieth century English paperback novel written by Mike Weller's conservative-leaning character M. J. Weller. A third novel in an imagined trilogy featuring MJ's nemesis—a miitant socialist character also named Mike Weller.
In fiction-within-fiction-within-fiction, far left anticapitalist character Mike Weller goes to South East Polytechnic to study culture and media after responding to an advert in a 1980 NME . As a newly graduated mature student this Mike Weller plans to continue study in the New Communist society. A reconstructed society like modern China based on a regulated Marxist-Engelsian state combined with an outsourced Earth Corporation free market in cheap goods and services including health, education, leisure, precarious work, and pleasure. MJ's Mike character works as low level local state bureaucrat for the GLC after graduating with a modest degree. His former occupation as failed commercial artist is erased after drawing too many scurrilous cartoons depicting the political system he imagines he lives in ("the marriage of heaven and hell"). Weller loses his GLC-funded community coordinator job after Bromley's incumbent Conservative Council leads a campaign to abolish London's new local state. An academic career is also eliminated after Weller fails to obtain a post-graduate degree at polytechnic after handing in a dissertation entitled 'Aesthetic and Ideological Representations of Cliff Richard in Popular Culture' .
Mike Weller's Space Opera number nine opens with a 1986 extract from his fictional author M. J. Weller's Earth Corporation Entertainments obituary for Ed Mogul (Eduard Mogilowski) in which Mogil's life as young communist, Cosmic Crusaders creator, RAF serviceman, successful mass publisher before an humiliating prosecution for obscenity (he published and printed illustrations by his jobbing artist "Gatch"). Character Mike Weller's introduction and progress at Mogul Studios (as Weller knew Eddie Mogul in the 1960s) are detailed, as is work depicting the style of other Cosmic Crusaders' illustrators—Gatch, Sid Muddleton and Nick Muir.Life of Mogil is followed by an Austin Spear-esque comic strip visualizing how "Gatch"(Weller's artist spirit-guiding character Graham Cratchett) illustrates. "Cratchett" is drawn over four pages in nullimaginative style featuring cartoon apparitions with balloon captions in shaded lettering befitting a benign mind-planter—followed by a page of Mogilowski's 1928 tale of angel-children Seraphim, Cherubim; and appointment of Mogil's original character Pin-Eyed Ferryman as special agent located on Earth: Ferryman moving as secret agent between this world and the otherworld; painstakingly copied in hand-lettering, and illustrated by Mike Weller, in spirit-guide Cratchett's black & white style.
A three-page comic-strip featuring Ferryman, Seraphim and Cherubim follows in nullimaginative drawing style ending with double-page "The Virtuous Angels Of Musical Eternity".
On Earth, in Mike Weller's Space Opera
, the mode of music changes in social and political reality. Spooks are at work. 'The Man Who Drew Too Much' is also the last issue of Space Opera
to engage with 1990s' alternative comics, sci-fi fanzines and Weller's graphic novel ambitions. Contact with the work of real life London's writers and alt-poets including UK's Iain Sinclair-led psychogeographic conductors of chaos give licence to MJ, permitting him to author a new writer of a different Mike Weller. Comic artists, cartooning Mike Weller of the late 20th century and his graphic novelist and illustrator peers become them
not us.
Weller pretends to draw in the style of several illustrators known forupgrading the status ofcomic books—inventing composite character 'Nick Muir'. Weller brings Nick Muir to life. A Nick Muir invented by MJ just to ridicule aparanoid looney left cartoon
character named Mike Weller.
Three of the Wellers, along with Nick Muir, are Michael John Weller's characters. And so is Mike Weller's Jobshop advisor 'Mr Elmaz' in a 1999 Space Opera
tale.Weller is a good enough illustrator to make a detailed study of character Nick Muir's artistic development over several years as he tracks through Space Opera
Muir's early drawing style influenced by "Gatch".A further MJ character "Sid Muddleton",
Mogul's friend, art director, production manager—yet pedestrian illustrator—reinvented Cosmic Crusaders for comic strip adventures in 1961 as the Teenbeat Marvelettes. Nick Muir took over "Teenbeat Marvelettes" comic work for Ed Mogul's music and comic-book publications beginning 1962 finishing in 1969. Mogul's commercial artists and several of their selected comic strips over the years are illustrated by Mike Weller pretending to draw as "Gatch", "Sid Muddleton", "Nick Muir", and as Weller "himself" in this ninth "tale from wellerverse".
The pamphlet finishes with a hand-lettered page and explanatory. There are four Mike Wellers in different spatial realities. Michael John Weller is the artist, writer and designer of the opera. And author of the libretto. But number nine is also an issue when music stopped as background to reading/viewing space opera. Partly due to increasing use of easy listening pop as continuous waiting-in-line government telephone holds and reported use of loud heavy metal as a military interrogation weapon. A soundtrack of continuous death metal, drill and two-minutes-to-midnight global climate catastrophe with hypertensive nuclear weaponization drumrolls. The new abnormal. A doomsday clock
tick-tock, tock-ticking away like twelve-tone serial noise . Space Opera
's soundtrack turns into a docu-track of cartoon re-scribbles.
Everything once drawn is changed for a sinister, spurious, tawdry Glory Glory Glory Temple built to celebrate the new millennium on an island of a hundred million nightmares.
Mike Weller's ninth space opera tale twenty years on...is also published here
at
linguistically innovative €#*@$?!
